


On Tragedy

by Wanderbird



Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda (Video Game 1986)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Past Whump, Philosophy, all the other LU kids are there too, but it's mostly those four, i guess?, not entirely sure how to tag this, tragic backstory time!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:07:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29085114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderbird/pseuds/Wanderbird
Summary: By the time Hyrule first finds that old woman being attacked on the road and gets pulled into his first quest, he lives alone. He'd lived alone for a while by then, for as long as he can remember. He doesn't think it's a big deal.But the other Links start talking about family, and it turns out they disagree.Please check the author's note for content warnings!
Kudos: 42





	On Tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> Hahaha I wrote this in one six-hour session of hyperfocus instead of going to class, rip me!
> 
> Anyway.  
> I wasn't really sure how to tag this, so I'm putting extra warnings here: this story gets pretty dark!  
> There is nothing sexual, and no graphic violence actually *shown*, but there are definitely some pretty graphic descriptions of the immediate aftermath. Also, Bad Things Happen to a kid.
> 
> If you don't want to read about any of those things, now's your chance. :)

“My family?” Hyrule blinked. “I don’t think I have one.”

Hyrule brushed away the pitying looks, the shock on his friend’s faces, and shrugged.  
“It’s true,” he said. “I mean there must have been someone around back when I was really little, I guess. I have vague recollections of it. Them. And one of them must have been an artist, I think, because the cave is full of sketches.” He smiled, and a sense of wonder creeped into his voice. "Sketches of birds. Scenery. All sorts of things. Sometimes there were drawings of people, too, who I think were my family. I’m even in a few of them.” After a moment’s hesitation, Hyrule pulled out a coiled sheet of paper tucked into a tube, kept more neatly and with greater care than anything else he owned. He spread the sketch out on his knees with a wistful smile, all faint wrinkles in soft paper, careful not to smudge the charcoal.  
Six smiling faces beamed out at them.

“See?” Hyrule said softly. The smile that traced his lips was soft, too, and only slightly sad. “I keep this one with me. It’s a nice… reminder, I guess. I don’t remember their names, their real ones, but this was my grandparent, I think.” The oldest face in the image was lined and smiling, buck teeth peeking cheerfully from lips curved up in a grin. “And her… partner, I think?” his finger shifted to the other old woman, standing next to the first. This one’s hair was long and dark despite her age, twined in a thick braid that disappeared behind her right shoulder. “Some of the drawings make them look so in love. And then there’s the other three adults—this one was my mom. She has the same eyes as me, the same nose, the same freckles. There are some really _lovely_ portraits of her.” Dark skin, dark hair, and a thick scar that crossed diagonally over her face, this woman’s eyes twinkled with amusement. Hyrule thought they did, anyway.

“Then this was my dad. He’s actually from Rauru, by the North Castle, according to the Old Man there. He liked to travel, apparently, until my mom saved him from a pack of Goriya the first time they met. He kinda gave it up after that.” He was the only one Hyrule actually had a name for, _Enori._ He had stories about Enori, too, relayed piece by piece by the people of Rauru.

“Next to him, I think that’s my mom’s sister? I called her Ani when I was a kid, and I kinda remember playing with her sometimes.” Ani certainly looked like his mom did, except for the way she wore her hair. Where his mom’s was tucked back in a bun, Ani’s hair was long and loose, except for two small braids looped in front of her pointed ears, with wooden beads on the ends. Her smile was different, too, crooked and split in the middle like a cat’s mouth, the same way Legend’s was. Hyrule lingered on her image. If he had to guess, it was probably Ani who had made the sketches. She seemed like the type. Then again, there were a couple of drawings from back when Ani was a kid, so maybe…

Twilight peered over his shoulder at the drawing on his knees. “And the last one. Is that… you?”

It was.  
He was a toddler, in this one, his hair still wispy from babyhood. Hyrule had put all the drawings of himself together, once, and traced their progression and the growth of everyone in them, trying to puzzle out some picture of the past.  
“You were so _cute!”_ Wind whispered. “Just look at those little cheeks!”  
“And the blanket!” that was War, leaning over on him. “That embroidery is just—wow. Why don’t you wear anything complicated like that now?”  
Somehow, all the other Links had clustered around where they could see the drawing. Hyrule smothered a laugh. “You guys are ridiculous! It’s just a baby blanket. I still have it, somewhere, back at home. It must have been made ages before I came along. One of the oldest drawings I’ve found is of that blanket.”

Then Legend glanced up at him, and sobered. “ ‘Rule…”  
Hyrule swallowed. He tried not to let the lump of unhappiness show in his face, but he wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. “It’s… fine,” he said. “Everyone left when I was really little, I think I was maybe six or seven. They said they’d be back in a week or two, but then they just… never returned.” He shrugged, again. “It’s fine. They left grandma behind to take care of me, but then I guess something happened, or she got bored, because she went out too, and she never came back either. It was just me after that.” Gentle fingers brushed the edges of the page. “I took care of myself.”

Nayru, this silence was deafening.

“Geez, you guys, it wasn’t that bad!” Hyrule glanced up at the others—but they all looked so _sad,_ like his life was the most tragic thing they’d ever heard. “I turned out fine. I was a little lonely, yeah, but the spring in the back of the cave had clean water most of the year, and I knew perfectly well how to forage and hide from monsters. I only got sick a couple times. And I made the trip into town every few months, too, so I could keep some extra food and water and medicine and all that stashed in the storeroom just in case.”

“…Do you think they abandoned you?” It was Twilight who spoke first, his fists clenched on his lap.  
 _Right,_ Hyrule remembered. _He was an orphan, too._

“Maybe they did.” Hyrule started rolling the picture back up to put it away. “I used to think that, after I first figured out my family was never coming back. But on the other hand—they made it as far as Ruto Village, picked up the usual supplies, and then no-one ever saw them again. No-one remembers seeing them, at least. I think it’s more likely they just got attacked on the road and didn’t make it out that time.” His words were casual. Of course they were. Attacks were a common occurrence, everyone knew that, and sometimes people died. “As for my grandma—I don’t know why she left. I barely even remember that she stayed to keep an eye on me to begin with.” He paused. “I think I might have found her body, though.” That memory was worse, and seared into his brain by fear and the start of starvation. “It took a while for me to get up the courage to go outside, and I was pretty hungry by then. I was looking for mushrooms, and I hid under a bush from a passing monster, and there was this awful _crack—”_

Someone in his audience sucked in a breath. Hyrule tried to focus on the workings of his picture case instead, undoing the laces and opening the magically-waterproof seal with hands that trembled only a little.

He’d scampered the rest of the way under cover as fast as he could manage, hands clamped over his face to stifle the sound of his breathing. Endless seconds had ticked by while the monster passed…  
“I looked down.” Hyrule swallowed.  
Bones had snapped under his weight, all bloody still and covered in tooth marks. His heart had pounded in his chest, fingernails dug into his cheeks until they drew blood. A scream clawed at his ribcage.  
“I was a good kid,” Hyrule said, safely surrounded by friends. “I stayed quiet.”  
The monsters came back around for a second look, sniffing and scratching at the ground. The kid named Link kept his hands pressed to his mouth. He stared at the bones beneath him, the arm, the wrist, the outstretched hand with fingers broken into splinters. Accusing. Dead. The scream felt like an animal tearing through his insides, squeezing at his lungs to try and escape. Rats scrabbling at the inside of his stomach, feathers in his throat that made him choke.  
“Eventually, the monster left.”  
Hyrule barely remembered how he’d run back home. There were tears on his face, but he kept his fingers clamped tight around that scream, that sob that threatened to escape, threatened to betray him. The mushrooms laid forgotten on the forest floor. When the door into the cave sealed behind him at long last, Link flung himself into the darkest corner he could find, and curled up, and finally he let it out. His throat was raw by the time the cave fell silent.

He took a bowl full of a water from the stream to clean himself up.  
Watching his reflection in the lanternlight, even the seven-year-old Link knew he was a sorry sight. His eyes were red from crying, his hair and whole face muddy, his nails had carved chunks out of his cheeks. Everything he’d touched since coming back was smeared with blood. His, the body’s, he didn’t know. The bowl, the walls, the clothes he wore…

“It’s fine.” Hyrule croaked in the present. Was that blood on his fingertips, staining the picture? “It was such a long time ago, you guys. Seriously. I’ll be fine.” Hyrule forced himself back to reality as best he could. He stuffed the paper in its tube without looking at it, did up all the fastenings with unconscious care.

He tried on a smile.  
It felt fake at first, like it always did. Especially when Hyrule checked the expressions on his fellow Links, all stricken or horrified or pitying. He did his best to maintain the smile anyway, and the beginnings of serenity that followed in its wake. He tucked his precious drawing away in his pouch as if nothing was wrong, and folded his hands on his lap.  
“I mean it.” Hyrule said. “I’m fine. You don’t need to look at me like that. I’m not bleeding, I’m not dying, and I’m not in terrible distress.” Saying it seemed to make it true. As he spoke, his stomach eased, his hands stopped shaking. “You asked about my family; except for you guys, I don’t have one.” One shoulder lifted, then fell in a little half-shrug. “It’s not the end of the world.”

Some of the other heroes seemed to take this better than others. Time, in particular, seemed to understand, falling back into his usual demeanor before long. Wild followed soon enough. Hyrule picked at his trousers while his own discomfort slipped away.

After a while, Hyrule furrowed his brow and spoke.  
“Y’know…” he trailed off. “One of the things I’ve learned in my Hyrule is that—horrible things happen. Sometimes, life goes horrifically wrong, and nothing anyone can do can ever fix it.” He paused. It was strange, putting this old lesson into words. “But at the same time—life goes wrong, but it also goes _on._ And on, and on. As long as we keep putting one foot in front of the other.” Hyrule hunched over, now that there was nothing in his lap, and propped himself up on his knees. He felt grass tickling the soles of his feet and that strange scent of growing things hung in the forest air. It was nice. He kept speaking, though, because he still had more to say.  
“Sometimes it sucks, and there’s nothing to make it easier. We still go on. There is no other choice, that’s just how life works, life just keeps going. All we can do is make the best of things as they come.” He met his predecessor’s eyes then, with that sorrow that filled them still near to the surface, and wished that he could project the calm he felt into Legend. “Then one day, you look back and find that horror has retreated into the distance. It’s still just as potent as it ever was, but— faded, I guess. Old. Grief and fear and things like that all mellow with time, become less urgent. I don’t know.” Hyrule broke off. “I’m not the best at this. I just… At a certain point, I guess all you can do is go on.”  
He sat there for a minute, picking at the grass.

Twilight spoke. “I guess you have a point.” His voice was rougher than usual, but he seemed to have settled down. “We just go on, huh?” Hyrule felt the change in the air as the rancher stood and stretched, then ruffled a hand through his hair. “I think _I’ll_ go on and try to find Wolfie. Something tells me our familiar furry friend’s presence would be appreciated tonight.” There was a flash of something sharp in Twilight’s face, just for an instant, before he turned his face up to the setting sun. “Besides,” he added, “I think I want to greet the twilight alone, this time. Just as… as a test.”

Hyrule watched the hero of twilight leave.

The others… mostly seemed to have calmed.   
Wind still looked shaken, which probably shouldn’t have surprised him. The sailor had been raised by his grandmother, after all. It looked like he was distracted talking to Legend, though, a fierce whispered conversation that was enough to get Wind riled up instead of sitting around worrying. Legend didn’t seem to have taken Hyrule’s attempts at philosophizing very well—but in this mood, Hyrule tried to remind himself, he probably just wanted to sort things out on his one. War looked thoughtful, Sky as unflappable as ever. Time was back in his usual impassive mask. Wild stared down at their Sheikah Slate, the blue light doing strange things to their expression as they scrolled through pictograph after pictograph. They seemed surprised, though, more than stuck, and pulled out an apple to munch on a minute later. Four actually looked to be the most unsettled of them all, eyes fixed on the shifting shadows of the campfire.

After a few seconds, Four seemed to notice Hyrule’s gaze. They sighed. “I’ll be fine. Just—just get over here, ‘Rule. I don’t want to be alone.” When Hyrule sat on the log beside them, Four offered a sad little smile, tossing a pinecone into the fire. It crackled and sparked. Four gently rested their head on the side of his shoulder, blond hair acting as a cushion. Tentatively, Hyrule wrapped an arm around them.

He didn’t ask what they were thinking about. Four didn’t offer.  
But together, basking in the heat of the fire, mutual friends talking in the background, it was enough.  
  
  



End file.
